


the downspike

by cemetery_driven



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Mental Illness, Polyamory, poly!pete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cemetery_driven/pseuds/cemetery_driven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete is on a bit of a downward spike and Mikey's on the other end of the spectrum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the downspike

**Author's Note:**

> This was literally just rambly bullshit that came out when I happened to be on a 'downspike' myself. Don't expect miracles.

Pete was never one for the whole single-side of the coin and maybe that credit could go to the fact he was, in fact, three-dimensional, but he wasn't sure entirely. Most of the time he wasn't fucking sure of anything.

 

Mikey wasn't used to the whole down-slide after the six-weeks or whatever of being king of the world. Maybe he was, was used to it happening to himself, but he wasn't used to it with Pete. Mikey's upspikes weren't quite as extreme and filled with video cameras and fireworks and seventeen shades of fucking pure bullshit artistry. It wasn't like it was any less worse. Mikey was just as bad sometimes. Just not on the upspike. His ups were so fucking different and Pete... Pete adjusted, he was a being of fucking adaptation or some shit when it came to Mikey Way. Usually, anyway.

 

Mikey was a creature of habit though and when Pete's six-week high took a sharp plummet into total fucking shit he hadn't been prepared, hadn't known what to do with anything, had just. Freaked out. Panicked. Mikey panicked a lot. Pete didn't. Panics were like... Mikey's ups. Mikey's ups were panics and lashing out and honestly it wasn't all-too-different from his downspikes. The devil was in the details with Mikey Way. What kept ticking in his head and where he was inside it wasn't always expressly communicated on his face.

 

It didn't mean Mikey's shit wasn't as bad, or wasn't as much of a fucking living hell sometimes, but it was. Different.

 

And really, really fucking hard.

 

Pete wasn't sure why they'd had a bitchfit but one minute he was sorta-okay, just quiet, maybe that had been what had started it, because Pete was never a particularly quiet kind of person except when the downspike hit. His head had hurt and everything was a little surreal and then Mikey had thrown the fucking hotel bible at the wall and sworn at the fucking stars and Pete had just. Bailed.

 

Bailing was way fucking easier and there wasn't exactly much he could do when Mikey had locked himself in the bathroom promptly after the fucking bible hit the floor.

 

It wasn't a case of forgetting to take their stupid fucking meds that made them both resemble some kind of human rather than whatever the fuck was actually going on in their heads, either. Pete had actually checked his own fucking set of pills to make sure that he'd taken them. He'd checked four times, and briefly, while Mikey had been taking a piss, taken a quick glance at his as well. Just for the sake of safety. Because if Mikey'd gone off his meds then Pete would've had to have told Gerard and then Gerard would get all fucking anxious and shit would fly and with the particular state of mind Pete was in right now, that hadn't been an ideal scenario.

 

Meds weren't a fucking cure though. They helped at best and at worst gave you headaches and made you throw up or not eat, or eat too much, or somehow put on ten pounds or lose just as much, or you didn't sleep or slept all day, or you were angry but not at anything or just tired and bored all the time. Pete had been through his fair share of trial and error, and Mikey had as well. Fuck, Gerard had tried half the fucking pharmaceutical catalogue and was still looking for the right combination to keep himself a hundred percent psychologically balanced.

 

Pete was like fucking ice right now and Mikey was like fire and there was no way that Pete was even going to think about going back in there and trying to curl up against him tonight, because he knew that at best he'd get a _fuck off_ , at worst, a potential black eye. He hadn't seen Mikey hit anyone as yet, but that bible had hit the wall pretty hard.

 

Space. Air. Oxygen between the elements. Let himself defrost, thaw out a little, warm up. Let Mikey cool off and burn himself out. It sounded shitty, it sounded terrible, it was a fucking shitty cliché but it worked, it was close enough.

 

If anyone happened to be walking down the hall at close to one in the morning Pete would just shrug it off as insomnia. Needing to walk around a bit, get rid of the excess energy building up in his legs. His eyeliner had run a little in the shower, duh, why the fuck would he be crying.

 

Fuck the world and everything about it because he shouldn't have to be concerned about hiding smudged makeup and a wet face at one in the morning.

 

If Patrick didn't answer the door to the room Pete silently hoped he was actually in, he'd pretty much resigned himself to balling up his shirt and using it as a pillow and sleeping outside his door. Like the one time he'd fallen asleep on Patrick's porch. It had been funny, in retrospect, Patrick's poor mother waking up and going to get the newspaper to find a bleary-eyed, red-faced Wentz kid on her front doorstep at six in the morning, but how he got there hadn't been. Still wasn't, really. He bullshitted though – not to Patrick, and eventually, he'd even told Mikey the full story – said he'd locked himself out of his own house, didn't wanna wake his mom, his window was too high up from the ground for him to try and break in with what he had on his person at the time.

 

Realistically, he'd been in a helluva downspike and unable to sleep, had climbed out his own window at some ungodly hour, and as soon as he'd actually got to Patrick's house had realized it was far and beyond out of human waking hours and that sleeping on a doorstep was the best option.

 

Being close to Patrick made shit better and it always had and it was totally, disgustingly teen novel.

 

Patrick looked just as bleary-eyed as Pete probably did, and his hair was sticking up at stupid angles that in any other situation Pete would've poked fun at. No glasses, either, and he blinked a few times before shuffling aside to let Pete in.

 

Patrick always just kind of  _knew_ things and maybe that was why Pete needed him so much.

 

He knew when to let Pete go, let him run riot and end up bruised and battered and whining about how bad his balls ached, and made sure nothing was broken afterwards. He knew when to put his foot down though, when it was getting too much, when the paintball guns and stupid fucking dares were getting too close to potentially-actually-harmful. He knew when the downspikes hit and how to back off or come close, whichever way it swayed, which even Pete couldn't fucking predict and barely knew half the time. There were far, far too many times when Patrick knew Pete's own insides better than he did himself.

 

Patrick was everything but Mikey was also everything and everything was too much, and Pete's head ached, and Patrick switched on the little light above the bed and Pete just collapsed into the mattress and buried his head in blankets that smelled far too little like Patrick's skin to have been slept in very long.

 

He missed the bunks on the buses very rarely but when it came to the way sheets smelled he liked them more because he could drown himself in Patrick or Mikey or himself and close the little snap-curtain thing and just not be part of the world for a while.

 

“'M sorry I woke you up,” Pete mumbled, voice muffled by the layers of cotton. He didn't like the fact they were white, either. White was clinical and clinical was too far from human when Pete was fucked up. Pete needed human on the downspikes especially.

 

Patrick's sheets in the bunk were blue and gray and his pillowcase had ugly purple dots on it but it was  _his_ , just like Mikey's blanket was a dark, dirty-ish green and his pillowcase had TIE-Fighters on it. They were them, they smelled like them, Mikey's smelled like cigarettes and coffee and Patrick's like spilled tea and something oddly sweet Pete never knew the source of, and their skin and sweat and everything that was terribly disgusting about them but it was  _human_ , it was real and authentic, visceral, organic, disgusting but Pete could lose himself in them and the world just stopped.

 

White sheets Patrick had barely been in never quite had the same effect.

 

“Fuck that,” Patrick muttered, settling back under the sheets, keeping his knees bent so he didn't kick Pete in the ribs. “You wanna talk about it, or...?”

 

Pete turned his head to look at Patrick, who'd apparently put his glasses on. What the fuck was it with Pete and cute little guys with talented fingers and fucking glasses?

 

“Maybe,” he sighed, relaxing his shoulders. He'd have to move, eventually, but his head was thrumming like Andy's kickdrum and it even felt like the fucking vibrations. “Mikey's being a fuckwit.”

 

Patrick cocked an eyebrow and Pete huffed and gracelessly moved around to settle under the blankets as well. Patrick even held them up, waited. He knew how to deal with everything.

 

“He's being a fuckwit?”

 

Pete rolled his eyes, and pressed his face into Patrick's upper arm, grabbing hold of his hand and almost curling around it like some kind of fucking koala. “I don't even know, 'Trick, he's just. A fucking asshole right now. He threw a bible and everything.”

 

Pete knew Patrick had  _the look_ on his face, the same look he usually had when Pete was rambling about some fucked up idea of what exactly he was going to make Dirty eat next. It was the  _I call bullshit_ look, most of the time, but also the  _huh_ and the  _are you sure?_ look because one small quirk from Patrick translated into a million different things based entirely on context.

 

“He's, like, taking-”

 

“I checked his meds,” Pete sighed. “I fuckin' shouldn't have, like, he'd probably give me a second fucking asshole if he knew, but I did.”

 

“He's just...”

 

“Upspike,” Pete murmured. “Again, but like.”

 

“You're not,” Patrick muttered. “You're not up or like level or like. Anything. You're. Downspike, aren't you?”

 

Pete's face tensed up, half his fucking body did because he knew it and he knew he knew it, he also knew he couldn't hide his own shit in the woods from Patrick, but hearing him actually  _say_ it was always like a fucking kick in the guts. He hated it. Hated every fucking thing about it.

 

“He's just being such a fucking asshole,” Pete sniffed, grabbing onto Patrick's arm tighter and he could feel the slightly-rough pads of Patrick's thumb rubbing over his knuckles. “Like. Like I don't even know what it all fucking started on. Like I was quiet and then... then something and then another thing and he was bitchy as fuck to Frank and Joe earlier, that's when I checked his meds, so maybe I should've anticipated it a bit, but I didn't and I don't fucking know, 'Trick, I don't know and he just. Fucking yelled and threw a fucking bible and went into the bathroom and it's like. He fucking. Fucking walked out and just left me in the fucking corner-”

 

“You know he didn't. Do that. Like he's not being that fucking drastic,” Patrick said, squeezing Pete's hand.

 

Pete sniffled again and wiped his face against the sleeve of Patrick's hoodie. He used to apologize for all the tear-stains and occasional mucus that he'd wipe on Patrick's clothes when this sort of shit happened, but nowadays Patrick would just get up, change, and make sure his shit actually got washed once Pete was relatively stable.

 

“It fucking feels like it though,” Pete said. “When he'd a fucking dick and just walks out it just. It feels like it's like that. I can't. You know I can't help but, like, go there and I fucking hate it because I know it's all in my head and he wouldn't, he wouldn't, just like you wouldn't, but you don't walk out. When he. When he walks out it fucking hurts and just. I know he wouldn't _leave_ leave but I'm such. Such a fucking asshole all the time and I don't even know why _you_ put up with me so why the fuck should he have to and-”

 

“No,” Patrick cooed, sliding down in the bed so he could actually wrap both arms around Pete comfortably. Pete was a contact person at the moment, and Patrick knew, Patrick knew fucking everything. “Stop fuckin' talking shit, please.”

 

The fact Patrick used two curses and still added a please was always kind of a mystery to Pete.

 

Pete huffed again and pressed his face into Patrick's chest.

 

“I. I just don't fucking know, 'Trick,” he mumbled. “I. I really don't and everything is weird and bad and fuck the world and everything.”

 

“I know.”

 

Pete didn't say anything. He didn't have to. He wasn't even sure what to say, honestly, because Patrick probably already knew everything that'd come out his mouth anyway. Sometimes it was a little freaky, a _lot_ freaky.

 

But Patrick was warm and soft, and he held on tight enough that Pete could feel him when he took a deep breath in. He smelled like soap, and Pete was a bit torn, because Patrick was clean and that was good, he knew Patrick loved his showers and not being thoroughly disgusting, but at the same time, hotel soap masked the _Patricky_ smell underneath. The same smell his blankets had on the bus was kinda hidden by the coconut-something bodywash.

 

Pete wasn't going to get the shits because Patrick bathed when he himself had rocked up at his hotel room door, woken him up at whatever hour it currently was, in clothes he hadn't washed in weeks and reeking of sweat and piss with fucking makeup smudged all over his cheeks and fingers.

 

“You should get some sleep,” Patrick murmured, and Pete could feel his breath against the top of his head, making his hair flutter. “Really, dude, I don't. Don't want you running on empty again.”

 

Pete's head was on fucking fire and there was no way he was going to move, nor let Patrick move, for any kind of painkillers. It'd go away on its own eventually anyway, it always did. He fucking hated the dull thrum in the back of his skull, but Patrick was too warm. Too warm, and too comfortable, and Pete just had a feeling that if anything changed, if either of them moved more than just-far-enough to turn off the light, there was no way that he'd ever get comfortable again.

 

“Yeah,” Pete mumbled, barely moving. He wasn't planning on letting go, but his hip was getting a cramp from the way his legs were. He didn't want to roll over. Really, really didn't, because Patrick was close, and Pete could fucking _drown_ in him. He couldn't fucking sink in to everything Patrick was and escape the world quite as easily when his face wasn't buried in Patrick's chest.

 

Patrick didn't say anything else when Pete begrudgingly rolled over and shimmied back, pressing his back into Patrick's stomach and chest instead. He was still warm, arm still heavy across the space between Pete's ribs and hips. The light flicked off, and Patrick pulled him closer, and all Pete could feel was kind of numb and kind of too-raw, and Patrick's body heat, and the fact that his head was pounding worse than it had all night.

 

Pete was never, ever the little spoon but he didn't have the energy to protest, and the room was dark and Patrick's breath was steady and slightly-wet on the back of his neck, and that was all that fucking mattered, that was all he needed.

 

In the morning, he didn't even hear Patrick's room door open and shut. He didn't even know how Mikey got in, how he got a key. Probably from Pete's wallet, because Pete usually had the second or third key to whatever room Patrick was staying in, and it wasn't like he'd taken inventory and grabbed all his shit when he'd left their room the night before.

 

Mikey was just there. In his ratty grey sweatpants and some shirt that had more holes than fabric, his hair sticking up at ridiculous angles and he looked like he hadn't slept. He probably hadn't. He didn't even have his glasses on.

 

Patrick was still dead to the world, and Pete was still the little spoon, and Mikey just pressed a soft kiss to Pete's forehead.

 

“I'm sorry. Talk later?” he whispered, and Pete knew it was because he didn't want to wake Patrick up as well.

 

Pete just nodded, and Mikey lifted the blankets on Pete's side and slipped into the bed. Pete let go of Patrick's arm and wrapped it around Mikey's hips.

 

Pete was the big spoon again, even though he was also the little spoon, and Patrick made some muffled noise when Mikey's spine brushed his forearm, but didn't wake up, just pulled it out from between Pete and Mikey's bodies and settled it back down over Mikey's chest, above Pete's.

 

Nothing was fucking perfect but Pete was pretty fucking close, and warm enough that he just pressed his face into Mikey's shoulderblades and fell asleep again. Someone else could deal with waking them up.


End file.
